About Peter Cardellichio

Recognizing that mothers of small premature babies could play a vital role in their baby’s survival, Samuel Byiringiro (a nurse in Rwanda) narrated several of our small baby videos in Kinyarwanda to show them to mothers in waiting rooms and neonatal units. Thanks to Sam’s initiative, the videos are now available to teach mothers at hospitals all over Rwanda.

Our Small Baby Video Series provides essential visuals that teach health workers and caregivers how to care for these vulnerable babies. Simple interventions can be lifesaving in any setting: keeping babies warm with skin-to-skin care, feeding mother’s milk by cup and breast, infection prevention, and knowing danger signs.

When first released in early 2017, the videos were produced in English, French, and Spanish. Some of the videos have since been narrated in Arabic, Kinyarwanda (Rwanda), Burmese (Myanmar), Bangla (Bangladesh), and Luo (Kenya). Initiatives are now underway to narrate the videos for Nepal, Tanzania, Pakistan, and Ghana.

The Small Baby Video Series was developed in partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to complement the Essential Care for Small Babies (ECSB) curriculum, which is based on the latest WHO guidelines.

Our award-winning public health animation, The Story of Cholera, is being broadcast on national television to help combat the cholera epidemic in Somalia. The World Health Organization (WHO) is also showing the video in selected “hot spots” to educate the population alongside its cholera vaccination campaign.

Public health authorities around the world have used The Story of Cholera in their efforts to stem outbreaks of this dreaded disease, as well as for community education on sanitation and hygiene. So far in 2018, the video has been narrated in Shona (Zimbabwe), Chichewa (Malawi), Rohingya (refugees from Myanmar in Bangladesh), Malagasy (Madagascar), Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea), Tsotsil (Mexico), and Vietnamese.

The Survive & Thrive Global Development Alliance, established in 2012 to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes, has released their final report highlighting key achievements, including the development of an evidence-based training methodology for maternal and newborn care. Global Health Media Project contributed to this effort with the development of teaching videos that complement the core training programs (Helping Babies Survive and Helping Mothers Survive) developed by partners within the Alliance. Our videos are organized in four series covering small baby care, newborn care, breastfeeding, and childbirth.

Survive & Thrive has played an important role in improving newborn and maternal health outcomes worldwide, supporting countries in strengthening national programs and training over 500,000 health workers in low-resource settings. The report summarizes these achievements and includes lessons learned for future maternal, newborn, and child health initiatives.

This year’s slogan for World Breastfeeding Week is Breastfeeding: Foundation of Life, highlighting breastfeeding as the foundation of lifelong good health for babies and mothers (WABA – World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action).

The videos for health workers teach them how to observe breastfeeding so that they can provide mothers with better guidance on how to position and attach their baby as well as manage common problems. The videos for mothers show them best practices in a way that is easy to understand and follow.

Our video library continues to expand with the addition of narrations in other languages. We’ve just added 10 breastfeeding videos narrated in Burmese, and now have a complete set of Burmese breastfeeding videos for mothers.

These videos were translated and narrated by the Filmaid Foundation, Thailand. Funding support for this work was provided by Perseverance Lodge of Hong Kong No. 1165 E.C.—facilitated by The Mother and Child Health and Education Trust—as well as by FilmAid Asia.

This brings the total number of videos we now have available in Burmese to 24. This week we also added “Continuous Skin-to-Skin Care,” which was translated and narrated by Save the Children-Myanmar. Other Myanmar languages that are included in our video library include Karen, Shan, and Pa’O.

In almost half of all children’s deaths worldwide, poor nutrition is a contributing factor. Most of the world’s children between the ages of six months and two years do not have a diet that meets even minimum standards. To help address this problem, we have collaborated with UNICEF to produce 17 teaching films on best feeding practices for children in this age group.

The Nutrition Series: First Foods for Young Children provides key messages on when, what, and how to feed children aged 6–23 months. The videos were filmed in over 60 homes in Nigeria, Kenya, and Nepal. The blending of footage from these diverse settings should make the videos useful teaching tools in low-resource areas around the world. Eight videos are designed for mothers and caregivers to help them better understand complementary feeding practices, while nine health worker videos are designed to help them support and counsel mothers and caregivers in these practices.

UNHCR uses Global Health Media videos to help teach essential newborn care in the Zaatari and Azraq Syrian refugee camps in Jordan. These camps have a combined population of over 100,000 people. Since the majority of midwives, community health workers, and mothers in the camps do not understand English, UNHCR has supported an initiative to translate and narrate a number of our videos in Arabic.

UNHCR selected videos they considered highest priority for their work. There are 25 videos in total, including: eight videos on newborn care, seven videos on the care of small babies, and 10 videos on breastfeeding (primarily those for mothers).

Hmong children in northwestern Vietnam are learning about basic hygiene from The Story of Cholera. In this short film clip from a school in the Sa Pa District, one of the poorest districts in the country, you can watch them view our popular animation.

Teaching these children basic hygiene is one of the goals of Projet Humanitaire Nord Vietnam (PHNV). The organization was founded by Emie Rathikoun and Julien Olivier after they visited this impoverished mountainous region and learned about the health problems there.

They found The Story of Cholera to be a powerful tool in teaching people how diseases are spread and what they could do to stay healthy. They narrated the video in Hmong, which is spoken by more than half the population of Sa Pa District. They have also narrated a version in Vietnamese.

PHNV is training teachers so they can reach more villages and schools with health information. They also distribute basic hygiene supplies throughout the region, including soap, a toothbrush, and toothpaste.

More than four billion people live without a household toilet. November 19 is designated as World Toilet Day by the UN to create awareness and inspire action around this global sanitation crisis.

Communities who grapple with the challenge of safe water and better sanitation often turn to our public health animation—The Story of Cholera—to help teach safe sanitation and hygiene practices. Originally developed to assist with education during the Haitian cholera epidemic in 2010, it is now used all over the world to help communities understand how cholera—and waterborne diseases in general—is spread and steps they can take to prevent it. We estimate the film has been watched well over 200 million times.

The Story of Cholera will soon be added to the permanent safe water exhibition at the Center for Disease Control (David J. Sencer CDC Museum) in Atlanta. It has won over 20 awards, including, most recently, winner of the 2017 CUGH-Pulitzer Video Competition for Innovations in Global Health. The Story of Cholera is available in more than 40 languages.

About 15 million babies are born preterm each year, and over 1 million die due to complications related to preterm birth. This makes premature birth the leading cause of mortality in children under five—yet many of these deaths can be prevented.

World Prematurity Day—November 17—focuses on raising awareness of this crisis. We are proud to be one of those voices, and to be part of a community of support for the health workers and parents caring for these vulnerable babies.

We know that simple interventions can make a vital difference in the care of small babies, even in places without access to modern facilities. We’ve created a comprehensive library of teaching videos on small baby care, covering topics such as how to keep infants warm with skin-to-skin care, feeding, infection prevention, and danger signs.

Five videos are designed specifically for mothers to demystify the needs of premature infants and help them care for their babies both in the hospital and at home. Since their release earlier this year, more than 10,000 copies of the small baby videos have been downloaded.

Our Small Baby Video Series was developed in partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to complement the Essential Care for Small Babies (ECSB) curriculum, which is based on the latest WHO guidelines.